Lumo Lift review

Lumo BodyTech, the maker of the Lumo Back
posture aid, is back for a second bite of the wearable cherry with the Lumo
Lift – a square Misfit
Shine-esque device that will not only stop you slouching, but also acts as an activity
tracker; counting your
steps, distance and calories.

But does the Lumo Lift do as its makers
claim. Is this reviewer sitting straighter then even while writing this review?

Read on to find out…

Lumo Lift: Design and wearability

Attaching to your clothing using a lapel-style
magnetic clasp, the Lumo Lift, like its predecessor (which required strapping
around the lower back), uses an algorithm to detect posture and gives you
vibration alerts if you should be sitting or standing a little taller. It
tracks core position, upper body position and other nuances of posture.

The technology is built into the electroplated
thermoset plastic tracker, which measure 44.5 x 25.4mm, is 12.7mm thick and
weighs 11.5g. The visible part is the aluminium clasp that is just 2.5mm thick and
weighs only a gram. So in total you're only looking at a device that weighs
12.5g; so it's not exactly going to be a strain on your back or make your
clothing sag.

There are a range of colours; the tracker
itself comes in black, white or silver and you can team this up with 10
different shades for the clasp – making it easy to match with your outfit. You
can even, we're told, get your own strong magnet and fully personalise the
clasp.

On the tracker, the clasp sits tight with the
same-sized square button – the only physical control of the setup.

Ideally you need to wear the Lift an inch or so
below your collarbone and it works better if you have tight fitting clothes.
Ladies could use a bra-strap; chaps – you better get yourselves down Abercrombie
to pick up some muscle t-shirts, as we found it just didn't work as well with a
regular fitted shirt. We also had issues with our bag strap inadvertently
pushing the Lift's button, so it's a shame there's only one recommended
position.

Lumo Lift: Posture aid

The Lumo needs to be told exactly what you
consider good posture to be. It's easy enough to do that, simply pop it on and
double tap the button (using the clasp to push it down). You'll feel three
vibration buzzes and you're away. You can realign it at anytime using the same
method, which is useful as sitting and standing postures are obviously quite
different.

That's it. Your posture will be tracked
during the day and, when you check on the Lumo Lift app (now available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone) you'll get a
rating of just how well you're posture is performing, with a word to describe
it (in our case, often not a nice one) and a cumulative time score based
against your goal.

For a more intense posture training session
you can initiate 'coaching' mode; whether that be for an hour or a whole day. Again,
it's easy to setup with a long press of the button all that is needed.

In this mode the Lumo Lift will buzz
everytime you move from your aligned position. And we mean every time. The Lumo
Lift is a bully; a draconian, oppressive being that demands perfection. If your
posture slips, it will buzz. Incessantly. As someone with pretty bad posture we
found we couldn't go five seconds without a scolding in coaching mode.

The trouble is there's no in-between. We would have liked posture reminders every five minutes or so. But without coaching mode
off, there's just the app score to worry about (which you often forget about)
and with it on, it was too intrusive.

Lumo Lift: Activity tracking

The app also records steps, distance and
calories, using a mixture of the sensors on board and calculations based on the
details you enter for your profile, such as size, sex, age and weight.

With the Lift, over a week period, we only
found discrepancies against the Vivosmart of around 5-10%, making it a fairly
reliable basic activity tracker as well.

There's no sleep tracking on board, though –
so if you're in the market for a wearable to help you with your zeds, the Lift
isn't for you.

Lumo Lift: App

As mentioned, the app is iOS only and is
quite basic. There are only a few displays and there's no analysis of either
posture or your activities on board. You can simply choose to see your stats on
a daily basis by swiping left or right, see basic graphs labelled 'Trends' or
see a text-based hour-by-hour report.

Unlike other apps in this genre, there are no
social aspects such as Facebook or Twitter updating, and there's no way of
brining in third party services.

Lumo Lift: Battery life and charging

The battery is a lithium polymer one and you'll
get five days of use on a full charge; a charge that goes from zero to full in
under two hours.

To charge, you simply pop the tracker part
of the Lift into the magnetic cradle, which is attached to a USB cable.

There's 32MB on board the Lumo Lift, which
doesn't sound a great deal but that's enough to store four weeks worth of data
if you don't get around to syncing it.

Lumo Lift

By ​Lumo BodyTech

Ultimately, the Lumo Lift succeeds. It will without doubt improve your posture….if you don’t throw it out of the window first. The algorithms on board definitely work when it comes to straightening you up; even a slight slouch is met with immediate retribution. Think of it as a tiny drill sergeant; one that demands perfection, all of the time. The activity tracking is pretty accurate, although it does it feels like its makers have tagged the step and calorie counting options on there simply because they thought they should as that’s what everyone else is doing. For around the same money you could nab a Fitbit Flex and we can’t help feeling that a Lift at half the price, with just posture training, wouldn’t have been a better proposition.

disappointing. Only works when one remains mostly still and needs realigning every time you stand or sit. So if you are constantly up and down all day, it can't correct. Just can't seem to get it to work right. I've aligned it and purposely slouched to see if after the time I set that it would buzz. Nothing. Frustrating